This would be a Halloween story but it's true, so to me it seems a whole lot creepier. It happened last night.

I live out in the country, on a couple of acres. I have a nutjob neighbor next door on the east side, and ordinarily I'd look at him askance as the non-supernatural source of this incident but a) he's not that strong, and b) he's not that smart, either.

I work out of my home, on the computer. My "office" is situated in the back of the house, in the southwest corner of the building. Right outside my window I can see the apple trees and the back pasture where there is an old barn and not much else. The previous owners had horses, but until recently it was just a big fenced empty field.

Earlier this year, I noticed my neighbor across the street was having a tough time feeding her two horses, they were looking a little thin, and my lawnmower broke down two years ago, so my yard was looking a little overgrown, so the perfect solution emerged! Now she grazes her horses over here, and I don't have to mow the overgrown pasture anymore.

It took a little work, but her son-in-law and his friends came by, helped me fix up the farm fence, and fix the old steel gates to the back and front pasture, they added low-voltage fence wire to keep the horses from testing the boundry (it isn't really electrified, but the horses think it is ). One of the old pasture gates was in really bad shape, so my daughter and I, with the aid of a crowbar and some cable, were able to lift it off its hinges and I was able to use pop rivets to get it back into one piece, we managed to level it and reinforce the hinges, and after about a half hour of struggling and fighting were able to get the damn thing back on it's hinges on the fence post. Needless to say- it is a very heavy 14 ft gate.

So now, often times while I am in my office, I can hear my neighbor from across the street leading her horses into one or other of the cross-fenced pastures. Often I can hear them making those horse-snort noises or neighing at each other, and I hear the hoof-beats if they decide to trot across the field. And I get to go out and visit them, give them apples or carrots during my break. Horses are one of my favorite animals. I can't afford to own horses, so this is the next best thing- the classic win/win.

Anyway, back to the weirdness of last night. When the horses are in the pasture, we have a really strict policy of making sure all the gates are closed- The road that runs past my house is an otherwise quiet country road, but when cars and trucks do pass by, they drive like the devil is chasing them. If you have ever read or seen Stephen King's Pet Sematary, that is a good representation of what that street is like.

So, last night I got off work at around 6:45pm, and it was dark out. The horses had been in the back pasture, but it was dark so I couldn't see them, but the front gate was wide open, so my neighbor must have taken them home for the night. Or so I thought. I took the station wagon to the store and when I came back about 20 minutes later the front gate was still open. It was pitch black in the back yard, and very quiet out. I didn't think too much about it.

That night my neighbor tried to call me, but my phone was on mute and I didn't hear it- I'd forgotten to un-mute it after work. But I usually have the phones on in case of emergency, although I hate late night calls, not because they wake me- I usually have insomnia so that doesn't bother me, but late calls are usually bad news. This morning I noticed the missed late night call, and that is unusual, so I called her back. Her first words to me:

"What happened to the back gate? I came by to get the horses and I saw the front gate open, and when I got back there I thought my horses were gone! What happened?"

"I don't know what you mean. I got off work and went to the store, but the front gate was open, I thought you had left it there when you came to get them. What are you talking about? I went to the store, but I was only gone for a few minutes. What's up?"

She then told me she saw the gate wide open, my car gone, and she went out to the back pasture to check on the horses. The 14 foot steel gate had been lifted off its hinges, nearly folded in half, and appeared to have been tossed at least 15 feet from the entrance to the back field. It was full dark by then and she couldn't see the horses, but the gate appeared to have been shoved outward from inside the pasture before it had been tossed. In a panic she ran into the back, and whistled for them. The horses were grazing contentedly in the very back of the property, and showing no signs of injury or fright. They both trotted up to her as they always do when she comes to collect them (usually she has snacks for them, so they run right up). She snapped the leads onto their halters and took them home, and that's when she called me the night before.

Now, whatever happened to that gate must have happened while I was working, but I did not hear a thing.

I went back there to see it in the morning light, and looked at the back pasture gate. The very same one Sarah and I had struggled to lift up onto the hinge posts on the fence earlier this summer. The solid steel frame 14 foot gate. Not only was it shoved off the hinges, tossed 20 or so feet out away from the back pasture, it was bent and folded such as it would have been if a vehicle had been driven from say, the barn into the gate at maybe 20-30 mph. Except there were no tire marks. And I thought, well, maybe the horses did it- My idiot neighbor has been known to walk out to his back yard and fire his gun into the air just to frighten them- except in western movies, most horses spook around gunfire. But if the horses had done that to the steel gate, there'd be horse hair or blood or both somewhere on the damaged gate, and we examined the horses, not a scratch on them. Plus, they were calmly grazing when Carol called them-

So, whatever went bump in the night back there did it pretty quietly. I kinda wish I knew what did that, and how, and why it didn't make any noise. But then again, maybe I don't.